Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s a little depressing to me that, as we stand here in this House and debate the issue of providing scheduled surgery services in hospitals, there are over 400 children with teeth rotting out of their heads — decay, bones diminishing. These are problems that are going to last forever — their entire lives — and are going to cost this system more money as we have to provide greater levels of health care to them later on in life.
I applaud the Minister of Health and Social Services, obviously, as I did in my statement, for the work she’s doing to try to solve this problem, but I think we have a fundamental problem here. One of the problems is we’re negotiating. We’re trying to get money out of people we’re not necessarily going to get money out of, such as the feds. We’re asking doctors to take a pay cut in order to work in the hospitals.
I’d like to ask the Minister if she’d be willing to stop the talks and start helping the children. Specifically, why are we asking the dentists to take a pay cut? They have a fee structure. They get paid whether they do the surgery in a clinic or an operating room. Let’s get rid of that aspect of this negotiation, and let’s focus in on what’s important, which is getting money out of the feds. If we’re not getting money out of the feds, let’s pay now and continue to fight the feds.